Kevin Phillips believes the U.S. is threatened by a combination of petroleum, preachers and debt

It's been decades since it made sense to call Kevin Phillips a Republican strategist. The G.O.P. he used to strategize for, the one whose electoral triumph he foretold in his 1969 book, The Emerging Republican Majority, got away from him a long time ago. The party it developed into, the one in which evangelical Christians carry lots of clout and budget balancers just about none, is not for him. With best sellers like Wealth and Democracy, about the widening split between rich and poor, and American Dynasty, which treated the Bush clan as well-connected mediocrities, he shifted to the role of...